Any PAs with sleep med experience?

[bk84nation]

Any insights into the average day working in Sleep Medicine? Do you guys just take naps all day or what? 

[anewconvert]

Not sure if serious, but I'll answer as best I can anyway. I'm not a sleep PA, still a student, but worked as a sleep tech for 14 years and worked closely with the pa for the last two years before starting school.

 

In her case Pt contact was mostly follow ups after the patient had their attended or home study to go over results or one year monitoring visits. The doc insists on seeing all new patients. She makes adjustments to pressure, orders new studies when warranted, fights with insurance companies and monitors trouble patients remotely when their PAP machine checks in. She was also involved with research studies the lab was in as secondary investigator.

 

It's a lot of hand holding and routine with complex patients and management interspersed through out. Definitely no naps though.

[DogLovingPA]

I've been doing pulmonary/sleep outpatient 1 day a week for 2.5 years.  If you have sleep patients scattered in with other complaints, they often offer a nice break (although there are definitely some complicated sleep patients).  But to do 100% full sleep (I've been doing this for the last 3 months as we had a sleep doc leave our group) gets old very very fast.

 

85% of my patients are OSA.  15% are other diagnosis - narcolepsy, idiopathic hypersomnolence, PLMD, etc.  The average day is 5-6 new patients sent to be screened for OSA, 10-12 established patients with OSA there for a compliance check with maybe 1-2 patients with other complaints.   

 

I would never recommend 100% sleep medicine to anyone, except maybe someone at the end of their career looking to slow down. 

[bk84nation]

Great, thank you for the insights. Much appreciated!